How Much Should You Really Be Investing in Media?

So, the question isn’t “What’s the right media budget?”

It’s “What factors should shape the investment we’re committing?”

Let’s break that down.

Your growth objective (not your channel wish-list)

Before you spend a dollar, you need clarity on what the business actually needs media to do.

Are you:

• Creating demand in a category where awareness is low?

• Stealing share in a competitive, noisy market?

• Driving short-term revenue to hit aggressive targets?

• Reigniting relevance in a brand that’s lost momentum?

Each of these scenarios demands a very different level and mix of investment. When the objective is fuzzy, budgets drift toward familiar channels instead of effective ones.

Brand maturity changes everything

A start-up, a challenger brand, and an established business should not be investing the same way, even if they are at the same revenue level.

As a guide:

• Start-ups often require proportionally higher investment to build credibility and find early adopters.
• Challenger brands need to invest to punch above their weight and capture share-of-voice in creative ways, particularly when up against well-funded competition.
• Established brands usually benefit from rebalancing spend, simplifying channel mixes (and creative!), and restoring brand strength alongside performance.

Industry benchmarks suggest marketing investment averages around 9.1% of revenue, but that number only makes sense when adjusted for stage, ambition, risk appetite and urgency.

Competitive intensity (your market sets the entry price)

Your budget doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists inside a market.

It makes sense that if competitors are spending heavily to dominate mental availability, a conservative budget won’t magically outperform them. Likewise, in less cluttered categories, smarter targeting and sequencing can deliver a disproportionately positive impact.

Understanding share-of-voice, media saturation, and category behaviour is critical, which is why our Media Investment Calculator asks for your industry, so that the results reflect real competitive conditions, not generic averages.

Sales cycle and customer value

It goes without saying that short sales cycles with low consideration behave very differently to longer, more complex buying journeys.

Key questions include:

• How long does it take someone to buy?
• How many touchpoints matter?
• What is a customer actually worth over time?

High lifetime value can justify higher upfront investment, while long sales cycles demand sustained presence, therefore, media investment needs to match commercial reality, not just quarterly pressure.

Internal capacity and readiness

One often-ignored factor is - can the business absorb the growth?

If sales teams, operations, or onboarding can’t keep up, over-investing in media creates friction, not momentum. Smart investment balances ambition with operational readiness.

Bringing it together

This is exactly why we built the Habitat M Media Investment Calculator.

It helps marketers:

• Stress-test different investment levels
• Adjust inputs based on growth stage, industry, and ambition
• Move from gut feel to structured confidence.

Try it. Change the assumptions. See how the recommendations shift.

And if you want to pressure-test the output with someone who lives and breathes media strategy, you can book a 1:1 session with us to refine the approach and align it to your business reality.

Because confidence comes from clarity, not guesswork.